Forty-Five Years After Alvin Toffler Coined “Prosumer,” Could AI and 3D Printing Make It a Reality?

Every major technology wave comes with big predictions about how it will change the world. Today, many of those predictions center on artificial intelligence (AI). Futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Michio Kaku argue that AI and future technologies will put very powerful tools into the hands of individuals. Most of today’s AI headlines are about chatbots, coding assistants, or the future of work. Manufacturing is rarely part of the story.

So what happens when AI meets manufacturing? Well, the answer could have less to do with futuristic robots and more to do with an idea proposed more than four decades ago by futurist and author Alvin Toffler. In his 1980 book The Third Wave (Chapter 20, The Rise of the Prosumer), Toffler introduced the idea of the “prosumer,” a blend of producer and consume